A decidedly non-mellow fellow who worked on an online jazz music show called "Mellow Down Easy" (*snort*) set fire to the radio station where he volunteered, because he was pissed that his song selections for the show were changed without his permission:

Paul Webster Feinstein, 24, has been charged with second-degree felony arson for the Jan. 5 fire that caused $300,000 damage to the studios of 91.7 FM KOOP. He faces from two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted.

Feinstein told investigators that he was "very unhappy" about the changes to his playlist, said Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Greg Nye. The songs were intended for an Internet broadcast that occurs when the station is off the air.

Link. I love that the guy's shows and playlists are still available online. (via Wayne's list)

Today on Boing Boing tv: Codehunters, a short animé film by UK-based director Ben Hibon of stateless films, produced with Glasgow-based Axis Animation. From the introduction:

The port city of Lhek is on the brink of collapse. A Pacific Rim state in a not too distant Asian future with no borders, no meaningful government and little law and order.

Corruption and crime are out of control in the dark alleys of Eda, Lhek’s slum district. Most sectors of the city are controlled by the army of dictator Khaan. The most underprivileged parts of the city are infested with dark Demons, ferocious creatures that spread fear and death amongst the city’s inhabitants. Rumor has it that the Demons are controlled by Khaan in order to keep his people in check.

Link to full BBtv post with video and discussion.

BB reader Jason Griffey says,

Following up on last year's cloud that was on BoingBoing, I did another Tag Cloud to help people visualize the State of the Union address: Link.

Funny old commercial for Space Food Sticks, which I believe were just cat crap in foil pouches. The voiceover is by the inimitable Paul Frees. (Via Serious East) (Thanks, Marilyn!)

There's plenty of reasonable concern over the increasing use of surveillance cameras -- but if you're going to install them, you'd think that you'd want cameras that were actually useful. Not so in San Francisco. As Engadget points out, the cameras in San Francisco have ridiculously bad frame rates, making them more like still cameras than video cameras. In some cases, there are 10 seconds between frames, meaning that the "footage" is often not particularly useful in solving crimes. San Francisco still insists that the cameras are useful for deterrent purposes. Somehow we doubt that it's a "feature" of these cameras to protect privacy by being horrifically bad. It does make you wonder, though, who makes security cameras that only take a photo every 10 seconds -- and, even more importantly, why would anyone buy such a security camera?

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TwistedOne151 writes to recommend a ScienceNOW article describing the work of a team of Italian neurobiologists who have found the roots of the capacity for tool use in the primate brain: the brain treats the tool as part of the body. The experiment as described is passing clever.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wired News reports that some relatively late-model iPod owners are discovering that their devices don't work with Apple's newly-launched iTunes video rentals -- even though those iPod models have a video playback feature.

As of Tuesday, the issue had been raised multiple times in Apple's support forums. So far the company's only response has been to confirm that movie rentals work only with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic and the third-generation iPod nano. Earlier iPods, including fifth-generation iPods sold before the September 2007 release of the sixth-generation iPod classic, are incompatible with rented videos.

Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired's "Listening Post" blog has more here.

CC-licensed image ganked from the photostream of Dan Taylor.

Analyst reports circulating in the news today indicate that about a million iPhones have been unlocked to operate on networks other than AT&T -- and that's said to be roughly 27% of all the iPhones sold in 2007. If accurate, the news is not good for Apple: the company earns significantly more when a new iPhone user signs up for service with AT&T. Link. So where are all those unlocked iPhones? This post by Damon Darlin on the NYT's tech blog gathers first-person accounts by folks overseas who weigh in. (Thanks, Adam)

Link (Via Scott Beale / MeFi)

Prior to 9/11, there was a lot of effort being put into plans for internet access from airplanes. However, the resulting turmoil in the airline industry put all of those plans on hold. In the end, that may have been a good thing, as the early technology was both expensive and clunky, and only a few generations later are we starting to see technology that is both affordable to install and use showing up. In the last few months, we've seen more and more stories about WiFi in the sky, with the latest one being that Continental is about to start offering live TV and WiFi, similar to a few other airlines. Having just flown on Continental on an excruciatingly long trip to Europe and back, I'd say that having internet access and live TV would have made the flights much more enjoyable.

What's really interesting here, though, is that Continental is turning to competitor JetBlue to provide the service. We were among those surprised when JetBlue bought some available spectrum for air-to-ground internet access. Like many, we had suspected that it would go to a service provider that would provide a generic service to any airline that wanted it. But, with JetBlue winning the bid, it opened up questions about whether the company would hoard the opportunity as a differentiator for its own flights. Apparently not. If JetBlue can succeed in outfitting other airlines, it could represent a useful side-business for the company -- even if it diminishes some of JetBlue's own competitive advantage. Of course, given that a new study has suggested that WiFi-in-the-sky really isn't a huge selling point, perhaps this makes sense. Basically, people are saying that it's a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. In other words, it's unlikely to bring that much new business directly to JetBlue, but if JetBlue can make it available on lots of other airlines, people would be happy using it.

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Stony Stevenson writes "Computer security expert Bruce Schneier took a swipe at a number of sacred cows of security including RFID tags, national ID cards, and public CCTV security cameras in his keynote address to Linux.conf.au (currently being held in Melbourne, Australia). These technologies were all examples of security products tailored to provide the perception of security rather than tackling actual security risks, Schneier said. The discussion of public security — which has always been clouded by emotional decision making — has been railroaded by groups with vested interests such as security vendors and political groups, he claimed. 'For most of my career I would insult "security theater" and "snake oil" for being dumb. In fact, they're not dumb. As security designers we need to address both the feeling and the reality of security. We can't ignore one. It's not enough to make someone secure, that person needs to also realize they've been made secure. If no-one realizes it, no-one's going to buy it,' Schneier said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CBC has an article about U2 manager Paul McGuinness' amusing tirade against ISPs who are "destroying the recorded music industry" with peer-to-peer file-sharing. Short version: blame the dirty hippies.

McGuinness said much of Silicon Valley arose out of "hippy values" that did not include a respect for copyright and established business models. Many of the area's entrepreneurs don't consider themselves "makers of burglary kits," he said.

"There are plenty of private equity fund managers who are Deadheads," he said, a reference to hippy icons The Grateful Dead. "And embedded deep down in the brilliance of those entrepreneurial, hippy values seems to be a disregard for the true value of music."

Here's a nice photo of Mr. McGuinness and Mr. Vox holding up a sheet of paper calling up the UK government to support a copyright extension for recorded music.

Link

Chelsie Gosk says

The New Yorker has selected the winners of the Eustace Tilley design contest. Winners have been notified via FlickrMail on their Flickr accounts, so if you entered, please check your Flickr account as soon as possible, and if you know someone who entered, please spread the word. Thank you.

Link

Since it's fairly well known at this point that sketchy sites can try to trick users into installing malware, it appears that malware creators are increasingly looking for ways to make its malware available from more legitimate sites. Two recent stories highlight this trend. First is the news that some hackers successfully rigged Google to link to sites that installed malware on certain popular searches. It took a fairly elaborate scheme to get it to work -- and it only lasted for a few days -- but it does highlight that just because a site's found via Google, it doesn't mean that it's safe. The second one apparently involves the popular urban legend debunking (or confirming) website, Snopes.com. Apparently, a well-known purveyor of adware has been running questionable or misleading ads (via Slashdot) on the site for over six months. Snopes was apparently told about this ad, but still chose to leave it running.

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Brian Herzog says:

I was going through my great grandmother's old school books, and found this "Race Types" plate in Maury's New Complete Geography, copyright 1906.

Almost any viewpoint from the past will be interesting for the contrast to current thought, and race issues especially so. In this case, it's interesting who they chose to highlight as a race, ie, "Scotch Highlander."

Also, this books groups Anglo-Saxon, Arab, Hebrew, Russian, and others all as "Caucasian," and classifies American Negro as "Ethiopian."

Is 2008 better or worse than 1906?

Link

From Warren Ellis' blog:

"The partner of designer and COILHOUSE co-creator Mildred Von has been arrested in Dubai for carrying melatonin. This, apparently, gave them the excuse to declare without testing that a few fragments of dirt in the bottom of his bag were hashish. Everyone's hoping that they'll be forced to release him in another seven days but the Dubai authorities, as you might expect, are behaving like monsters.

Details are here. Please read them before asking questions. Mil's contact details are in that post too. We might get lucky and they might bounce him out when it turns out there's nothing to hold him on, but, really, that doesn't sound like Dubai. If you think you can help, please do get in touch with Mil. Thanks."

Link (Thanks, Alias!)

Hell Yeah! reminds us of a 2-week-old development that somehow escaped notice here. A team of Russian hackers has found a way to decipher a Yahoo CAPTCHA, thought to be one of the most difficult, with 35% accuracy. The Russian group's notice, posted by one "John Wane," is dated January 16. This site hosts a rapidshare link to what looks to be demonstration software for Windows, and quotes the Russian researchers: "It's not necessary to achieve high degree of accuracy when designing automated recognition software. The accuracy of 15% is enough when attacker is able to run 100,000 tries per day, taking into the consideration the price of not automated recognition — one cent per one CAPTCHA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the past few months, more and more people have been noticing that eBay seems to have stagnated. Sure, it's been making plenty of money and still gets a ton of traffic, but it's not growing as fast as people would like, and there are numerous signs that it's starting to plateau. With Meg Whitman stepping down and John Donahue stepping up to the CEO position, the company has now announced lower fees and "tightened" seller standards to try to cut down on the rampant fraud that has managed to scare off many potential eBay buyers. Amusingly, this lowered fee comes just a day after new research hyped up how much eBay was saving people. The researchers behind the report suggested that, if the economy does go into a real recession, eBay should benefit as people switch to eBay searching for bargains. If that were truly the case, though, then it would seem eBay wouldn't have to be cutting fees.

The real problem may simply be that eBay is too constrained by its own success. It's attempts at branching out with things like Skype and StumbleUpon certainly haven't done much to help eBay, as the eagerly prayed-for synergies turned out to not exist. eBay's own attempts at revitalizing its core business have been equally pointless. So, it seems like something of a desperation play to lower fees, but it's difficult to see it having much of an impact. Certainly, it will make eBay sellers happier, but the transaction fees aren't the barrier eBay is facing in staying relevant. In fact, eBay itself should know this. When Yahoo tried to compete with eBay, it's key selling point was lower transaction costs for sellers, and that didn't do much to attract users.

eBay finds itself in a tough position. If it changes anything in its core business too drastically, it risks alienating those who helped bring the company to its current position. But, not changing will continue the stagnation process and certainly make the hole it needs to dig itself out of that much deeper. In figuring out a new path, it may want to take a few lessons from Amazon, which has been successfully reinventing itself from the inside with its web services offerings, while still striving to keep its core userbase satisfied. Amazon recognized that it could expand into a non-competing business that leveraged its strengths. While some might say that's what eBay tried to do with Skype, that was an acquisition, rather than a ground up offering, and it's still never been clearly explained what synergies there are between the two. In contrast, Amazon's web services offering clearly builds on its experience managing large scale backend operations, as well as its ability to handle a massive number of transactions. eBay probably should be trying to become the "Kinkos" of the web -- a small business's ideal partner -- but has yet to figure out how to do so.

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